The 40 Days for Life prayer vigil begins in Chistchurch on 6th March and runs through to 14th April. The vigil is involves peaceful prayer in Hagley Park opposite the Christchurch Women’s Hospital, where unborn children are losing their lives every day. Right to Life is encouaging anyone who wished to help save the lives of unborn children to get involved by signing up for vigil hours. Even taking a single one-off one hour prayer slot over the entire 40 days could help save a life.

40 Days for Life is a peaceful and powerful prayer initiative that has been running for several years in 7 countries across more than 741 cities and is known to have saved 15,256 lives saved, 186 abortion workers converted and 99 abortion centres closed over the 23 previous campaigns. Through prayer and fasting, community outreach and peaceful vigil, we might help to bring about an end to the tragedy of abortion and offer hope to the abortion vulnerable.

How can I participate?

If you are interested in being a part of 40 Days for Life, then we’d like to hear from you! Here’s how you can help:

Invite and encourage friends, family members, and parishioners/your church community to participate;

Distribute flyers;

Speak at your church, parish or faith-based group about 40 Days for Life and invite participation;

Encourage your church or group to adopt a day during the vigil and be responsible for filling the hours;

Learn how to talk to mothers, fathers, abortion facility staff and the public in truth and love;

Provide feedback on your past experience of 40 Days for Life.

Time spent outside the abortion facility can be for as little or as long as you are able to sacrifice. We also invite those who are house-bound or outside of Christchurch to pray in solidarity with the other faithful who are praying at the the vigil sites. 40 Days for Life is open to all people of faith. We encourage all Christian Churches, youth groups, parishes and organisations to sign up for one or two hours at a time, or commit to filling the hours for a half a day or even a full day! Through God all things are possible!Please consider participating in the upcoming Christchurch 40 Days for Life vigil.Together, let us rise up in prayer and fasting and pray for an end to abortion in New Zealand!

You may prefer to sign up using the official 40 Days for Life Android App which can be installed on your phone or computer by clicking on the above link which opens in Google Playstore.

Right to Life commends the governments health initiatives to protect the health of our children from second hand smoke in vehicles. However we must ask why the governments is so inconsistent in protecting the health and lives of all our children? How can the government say on one hand that it is a crime to expose a child to smoke in a car and on the other that it is not a crime to kill a child in the womb by tearing off its arms and legs in a violent and painful abortion? In fact in the very words of the Prime Minister this action is simply “a reproductive choice for women.”

Associate Minister of Health Jenny Salesa in recently announcing a campaign to discourage mothers from smoking when they are pregnant stated that “first and foremost” the objective was to protect children.

Our children’s health is important and we know that second hand smoke can damage immature lungs, but Right to Life points out that there is hypocritical inconsistency in such a statement, given the disparity between the treatment of unborn chldren who are wanted and those who are not.

Is it also not ironical that pregnant women who smoke are often sent strong messages portraying them as ‘bad mothers’, who must stop smoking because it is harmful for the baby. What could be more harmful than dismemberment abortion?

The most dangerous place for a New Zealander today is not being exposed to smoke in a car, but rather simply being in its mother’s womb. In 2017 there were 13,285 children killed in their mother’s wombs. All of these deaths were preventable. They were sanctioned and funded by the government and classified as a core health service with unlimited funding. In contrast it is not known if any child has died in New Zealand as a result of being exposed to smoking in a car.

Right to Life requests that the Prime Minister and her Labour led government protect the health and lives of all of our children from when a new human being is created at conception.

The Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern is to be commended for her moving words of love and concern for children expressed in her beautiful prayer at the Waitangi Day commemorations. She quoted Dame Whina Cooper, “Take care of our children. Take care of what they hear. Take care of what they see. Take care of what they feel. For how the children grow so will be the shape of Aotearoa.” Referring to the principles of the Treaty she said, “Of course, we as a Government are trying to fill those not just in legislation, but in the policies and programmes that we roll out.”

Right to Life fully supports the principles of the Treaty and believe that we all have a responsibility to ensure that the Treaty rights of Maori are upheld. Right to Life believes that Article Three provides for the protection of the lives of Maori from conception to natural death. We ask the Prime Minster how can her government claim to uphold the Treaty when her Labour led government has plans to withdraw the protection of the Crown from Maori proclaimed in Article Three of the Treaty.

The Crimes Act section 182 Killing an unborn child states that the unborn child including Maori has a right to be born. This is a human right that is universal and inalienable. It is a serious crime to kill an unborn child including Maori and on conviction an offender may be imprisoned for up to 14 years. This protection has been there since 1856.

It is the intention of the Prime Minister and her government to withdraw this protection from women and the unborn including Maori. It is her intention to decriminalise abortion and to make the killing of the unborn “a reproductive choice for women.” Right to Life asks her, how can you uphold the principles of the Treaty by saying that it is no longer a crime to kill an unborn Maori child?

Right to Life believes that this proposed anti-life and anti-women legislation would be an unprecedented attack on the Treaty, a violation of human rights, and a betrayal of Maori.

Right to Life laments that the once great Labour Party of Michael Joseph Savage and Norman Kirk has departed from its founding principles to protect the weak and the marginalised in society. Today the unborn child is the weakest and most defenceless member of the human family and desperately needs effective legal protection for its right to life.

Right to Life requests that our Prime Minister, a caring woman and a loving mother, adopts the mantle of champion of women and their precious unborn by rejecting a culture of death with her ill-conceived proposal to decriminalise abortion. We urge her Instead to promote a culture of life by promoting adoption as a loving option for women with an unwanted pregnancy and women’s reproductive health with chastity before marriage and faithfulness within marriage.

Abortion by Dismemberment up to two weeks past this stage of child development is what the government proposes.

Right to Life is concerned that the Prime Minister,Jacinda Ardern has declined to answer important questions on public policy sent to her by our Society on 15 January 2019.

The principle questions asked were:-

Is it still your policy to retain a restriction on abortions imposed at 20 weeks gestation in the Crimes Act section 187A in your proposed legislation to decriminalise abortion?

Is it your policy to accept dismemberment abortions that permit an abortionist to tear the arms, legs and head off an unborn child?

The new coalition government has specifically made a commitment to “strengthen New Zealand’s democracy by increasing public participation, openness, and transparency around official information”. Right to Life believes that the Prime Minister has a duty to lead by example.

The Crimes Act stipulates that the cut – off point for abortions is 20 weeks, The cut-off point in the legislation being drafted by the Minister of Justice is 22 weeks. Mike Munroe, Chief of Staff of the Prime Minister’s Office advised on 24 January that he was referring our Official Information Request to the Minister of Justice, as he was responsible for “alternative approaches on abortion law.”

At the Newstalk ZB’s Leader’s Breakfast just prior to the election Jacinda Ardern made the following statement:-

“Yes I think abortion should come out of the Crimes Act. That does not mean for a moment that I am proposing what has been claimed, that you should be able to have on-demand abortion to birth. No that is absolutely not what I am saying. We of course must regulate… We have time periods already set out in the law and I am not proposing changes to that. I am proposing it comes out of the Crimes Act.”

This is an important public policy statement concerning abortion. The public have an absolute right to ask the Prime Minister, who believes that killing an unborn child should not be a crime, is relentlessly driving a change in the abortion law to remove abortion from the Crimes Act and to make abortion a “reproductive choice for women”. Will she support retaining the 20 week cut off as she has publicly stated?

The minister of Justice at the direction of the Prime Minister is to bring a bill to Parliament to adopt the Law Commission’s Model C. Under this Model, there would be no statutory test until 22 weeks of a pregnancy. After 22 weeks, the health practitioner who intends to perform an abortion would need to be satisfied that the abortion is appropriate in the circumstances, having regard to the woman’s physical and mental health and wellbeing. Everyone knows what this means, – effectively abortion on demand up to birth.

Curia Market Research an independent pollster released in January 2018, polling of 1,013 persons. Just 9% support the current legal limit for an abortion of 20 weeks. Only 4% believe it should be later than 20 weeks,including up to birth. 50% think the time limit should be shorter than the current 20 weeks, and a further 36% were unsure.

The median choice of those who did choose a time limit was 15 weeks.
Significantly, 56% of women think the time limit should be less than the current 20 weeks. Incredibly, 53% of those who generally support abortion think the timelimit should be less than the current 20 weeks – 29% of abortion supporters say 10 weeks or less.There is increasing opposition in the United States to the violence and suffering imposed on defenceless unborn children by dismemberment abortions. There are now ten states that have outlawed this horrific violence on the defenceless.

The public have a right to know if the Prime Minister who is herself a loving mother of a young child supports protecting the unborn from this dismemberment violence.

Nearly 61,000 5 year olds will commence their schooling this week, happy and laughing, full of the joy of life. Sadly around 13,200 children who would have been the same age are missing. What would have been their joy and laughter replaced by a deathly silence. This represents nearly 520 empty class rooms of children. What a loss to our nation! They join the ranks of the 500,000 children who have been murdered in their mother’s womb since 1977. These are the children who were considered of little worth and whose lives were terminated by abortion. These are the nameless and whose only record of existence is a cold statistic in the Abortion Supervisory Committee’s annual report to Parliament of 2014.

Their absence is mourned for they were created with many talents to enrich our society. They were formed in their mother’s wombs by their Creator with loving care. Our society is impoverished by their absence. We should also have deep compassion for their mothers who will be mourning the loss of their children. Many will suffer in painful and lonely silence having been told by Family Planning that what was aborted was just the contents of the uterus; that abortion is safe and that their grief is just their imagination. Mothers, who are so often coerced into an unwanted abortion, because of their abandonment by the father or because of pressure from family and friends. [Read more…]

Right to Life asks why is the life of a Kea worth more than the life a Human Child.

It is a sad commentary on our society that the killing of a Kea incurs the full weight of the law and the wrath of the court and the community while a Wellington doctor who was responsible for killing thousands of innocent and defenceless unborn children was honoured by the Queen with a Knighthood for “services to women.”
A 46 year old construction worker, was sentenced to 150 hours community work by Judge Tony Zohrab in the Nelson District Court on 23 January for killing a kea, an endangered species in the Motueka Valley in July 2017. Juliette Irwin, the prosecuting lawyer for DOC sought a fine of between $10,000 and $15,000. She stated that, “this was a callous killing, we have an animal victim who is defenceless and unable to complain.” The Judge accepted that the accused was unable to pay a fine.

Under the Wildlife Act 1953, the Kea is an absolutely protected species. Its killing is a serious crime, on conviction the offender may be fined up to $100,000, or imprisoned for up to two years. This crime was considered important news and was given extensive coverage by all the media in New Zealand.But again we ask why is a Kea given absolute legal protection for its right to life, while the unborn child’s right to life is given no legal protection?

While we acknowledge that it is important that we have respect and have legislation protecting the right to life of endangered species, Right to Life questions why our nation is prepared to legislate for absolute protection for the right to life of endangered species, yet is not prepared to respect or provide any legal protection for the right to life of children in the womb.

At the same time an estimated 35 children in the womb are deprived of their life each day in New Zealand with the permission of Parliament, government and the community.

It is an appalling injustice that the Labour led government of Jacinda Ardern is committed to decriminalising abortion as they believe that it is not a crime to kill an unborn child. The government is of course committed to retaining the killing of a Kea as a crime.

The following article is a re-post of an article by Jon Bloom of the Desiring God website.

Abortion is rarely talked about.

I’m not talking about the word “abortion.” We hear this word a lot in the public square. But we rarely hear about it. Abortion almost always refers to something else. We hear that abortion is fundamentally about a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. Or abortion is a litmus test for judicial nominees. Or abortion is symptomatic of what’s wrong with the social discourse in America.

Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” Abortion is a clear example of this truth.

The killing of children can be tolerated and even championed as a social good so long as we don’t call it what it is. Call abortion an individual’s right to privacy and you can write it into the legal code. Call abortion a compassionate choice offered to a frightened girl to save her future or to save a child from an undesirable quality of life and you can swing popular opinion. Call abortion a liberation of women from the social and economic oppression of male dominance and passionate people will march on capitols chanting demands to preserve the human right of abortion on-demand.

“We have allowed legal child-killing on-demand for more than forty years because we’ve called it something else.”T

But you won’t hear the street marchers chant, “We will fight for the right to kill our children!” Because calling abortion what it is might awaken uneasy consciences out of a euphemistic stupor to realize that millions of the most defenseless human beings on the planet are being denied the self-evident, Creator-endowed human right to life.

Death is in the power of logic-contradicting, term-redefining, and deceptively-clinical tongues. We have allowed legal child-killing on-demand for 41 years because we’ve called it something else. Life Is in the Power of the Tongue.

That’s why Christians, “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13–14) must keep speaking the truth about what abortion is with relentless clarity. “We destroy arguments” (2 Corinthians 10:5) by not yielding the ground of clear truth. Because life is in the power of truth-speaking tongues.

Our legal code demonstrates that we know this because it grants an unborn child the rights of personhood in areas such as tort, criminal, and property law, making legalized abortion a schizophrenic, arbitrary, and tragically defective legal ruling.

“93% of all abortions in the United States are performed on healthy mothers, with healthy babies.”T

Abortion is mercilessly violent. Children with heartbeats, brainwaves, and a nervous system that allows them to feel pain are literally torn to pieces.

“93% of all abortions [in the United States] are performed on healthy mothers, with healthy babies. . . . Less than 1% are performed because of rape or incest.” (Abort73)

The number of children killed by abortion every year dwarfs the Holocaust and other homicidal horrors of history.

Approximately 3,300 children are killed by abortion every day in the United States. Americans kill 1.2 million unborn children every year.

The World Health Organization estimates between 40 and 50 million children are killed around the world by abortion, approximately 125,000 every day.

Unborn girls are killed at a higher rate than unborn boys. Estimates are as high as 163 million unborn girls have been intentionally killed since the 1970’s because they were girls, resulting in what some are now calling a “gendercide” (see Abuse of Discretion, 334).

And we will speak many, many more clear truths (here are 15 more) until abortion on-demand is ended.

Here’s the point: truthful tongues save lives. Legalized abortion is an evil that occurs and is tolerated because of deceptive words. And truthful words are required to clear the fatal fog with clarity.

Keep Speaking

I don’t know if our speaking truth will succeed in helping to change the abortion laws. World Magazine reports encouraging developments. But as John Piper says, “We are not called to win; we are called to witness.”

However, history does show that the faithful, relentless, prophetic witness of the saints over many years results in the remarkable spread of the gospel and the end of thousands of horrible social evils from the individual to the national levels.

So we must keep speaking. We must call abortion what it is: the killing of children and a vicious, established, legalized evil and injustice.

“Approximately 3,300 children are killed by abortion every day in the United States. 1.2 million every year.”T

Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we just remembered because of his relentless truth-telling in the face of established, legalized, racial evil, once said, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.”

We dare not be guilty of this. The Lord who said, “Rescue those who are being taken away to death” will not accept the excuse, “Behold, we did not know this” (Proverbs 24:11–12).

Right to Life is opposed to the proposal of the Labour led government to decriminalise abortion and promote capital punishment for the unborn as “a reproductive choice for women.”

Capital Punishment and abortion have the manifest similarity that both concern the deliberate and state-sanctioned ending of life, which is why both are
controversial issues.

Capital punishment for murder was removed from the statute books in 1961, it has been retained only for treason. There was a total of 85 convicted criminals executed in New Zealand between 1842 and 1957. But New Zealand still retains the death penalty for its unwanted unborn children. Since 1977, the government has presided over the execution killing of more than 500,000 innocent and defenceless unborn children who were found guilty of being “unwanted.” Being an unwanted unborn child is a capital offence in New Zealand and such children are subject to the death penalty.

Right to Life requests that the government conduct a referendum on the taxpayer funding of the abortion industry at the 2020 general election. The government promotes the false “right of women to choose an abortion”, yet denies the right of the taxpayer the choice to refuse to fund abortions. As taxpayers we are compelled to fund abortion, a refusal to pay taxes could result in a heavy fine or imprisonment.

Since 1977 the government has decreed without consultation and the consent of the taxpayer, that the killing of the unborn in New Zealand is a core health service to be funded by the taxpayer with unlimited funding.

This is an intolerable injustice:-

It makes all taxpayers complicit in the murder of the innocent and defenceless unborn children.

It soils our hands with the blood of the innocent, placing an intolerable burden on the conscience of the nation.

It implicates all taxpayers in the damage inflicted on women’s health through abortion.

Right to Life also again asks why, with the full knowledge that abortion is the murder of a human being, are the churches silent in protesting this appalling injustice?

The community has been coerced by this pure evil as it is promoted in the beguiling words of the Minister of Justice, Andrew Little as “a reproductive health service of choice for women”, it is not!

Pregnancy is not a disease and abortion is not health care. The unborn child is a patient that needs special care and protection. Abortion is the only “health service” that has the specific objective of killing the patient.

In 1988 the Abortion Supervisory Committee in its report to Parliament noted that we had an “unwieldly system of authorisations of abortions for potentially normal pregnancies on pseudo legal grounds.” Right to life believes that the Committee was alluding to the 97 per cent of abortions that are authorised on socio economic grounds masquerading as mental health. Dr Christine Forster, a former chairman of the Committee is on record as stating, (these) “are the grounds used by certifying consultants to provide abortion on demand”.

There were 13,285 abortions reported in 2017. Why should the taxpayer be required to pay for these abortions authorised for social reasons masquerading as mental health? Abortions in public hospitals cost on average $1100.00. That is a total cost in excess of $14 million and this excludes the more than $4 million in fees paid to certifying consultants in 2017 for authorising abortions. This money should and could be used for funding genuine medical procedures, such as hip and knee operations.

Right to Life believes that the government should in the interest of the lives of unborn children; our future citizens, the health of women and justice for the taxpayer provide a referendum on taxpayer abortion funding at the 2020 general election.